Researchers Create Nanobots That Can Fix Electronics

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The next big thing in science may be very small indeed. A new study in the journal Nano Letters presents revolutionary tiny robots that can automatically mend cracks. The researchers behind the project demonstrated their robots fixing tiny fractures in electronics, but they say these machines could be made to heal tears in biological systems as well.

“Such a nanomotor-based repair system represents an important step toward the realization of biomimetic nanosystems that can autonomously sense and respond to environmental changes,” the authors write. This has a “wide range of applications, from self-healing electronics to targeted drug delivery.”

Nanobots have long been envisioned in science fiction, and a few years ago they became a reality. In 2012, researchers demonstrated DNA origami – DNA segments folded into structures – that can attack tumours.

But this new study shows nanobots repairing, rather than destroying.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Pittsburgh took inspiration from bio-processes. When you have a wound that bleeds, platelets in your blood rush to the wound area to start the clotting process. They sought to replicate this action artificially using Janus particles – particles made of two hemispheres from different materials.

Here, one hemisphere was made of gold, the other of platinum. They dumped them into a solution of hydrogen peroxide, with which platinum reacts and releases a stream of oxygen. This stream propels the particles through the solution.

In the experiment, the researchers placed the solution on top of an electronic circuit that was deliberately marked with scratches one-tenth the width of a human hair. The particles were drawn to the “energetic wells” around the scratches, deposited in them, and the gold in the particles fixed the circuit, allowing electricity to flow again.

If the team manages to transfer this concept to biological systems, soon enough sci-fi medical nanobots could be reality.